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Pojo's HeroClix "Click of the Day"
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Shooter |
Silver Swan
73 points
Range 8; 1 Target
7 clix of life
Charge (1 click); Force Blast (4 clix); Blades/Claws/Fangs (1 click); Pulse
Wave (3 click); Incapacitate (3 clix); Toughness (3 clix); Ranged Combat
Expert (4 clix)
Ah back to Unleashed and some of my more favorite sculpts (is that proper
grammar? I honestly can’t tell). Anyway, Silver Swan is actually kind of a
boring sculpt. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad sculpt. Quite the contrary
actually, I think she is very nice looking. But she just doesn’t appear to
be doing anything really. She doesn’t look ready for battle even. She really
just looks like she’s out for an evening fly around…oh come on, wouldn’t you
randomly take evening flights if you could? That’s what I thought.
Silver Swan has some of the most unique series of powers in my opinion. Her
stats are standard, maybe even a little low for a 73 point figure. I mean,
her highest attack is a 9, and that’s only on her fist click, and her
highest defense is 14 and that only hangs around for the first 2 clix. But
her stats aren’t really what make her interesting. Looking at her dial’s
first click, she has Charge and BCF (she also has toughness, but that’s not
really interesting). Combined with her flight and an average speed of 8
(charge of 4), she looks like a nice charging slasher. But click her over to
her second click and she loses both of those powers and picks up Force
Blast, Pulse Wave, and Ranged Combat Expert. She becomes a complex ranged
combat offender. She can push people away from her is they get too close
then she can either take a shot for 4 damage with her above average 8 range
or use her Pulse Wave to blast anyone around her for 1 damage within 4 range
regardless of whether they have stealth, invulnerability, super senses, or
whatever. For those of you who don’t know, Pulse Wave is one of the best
powers in the game because it ignores all powers and abilities of anyone
within the range of the Pulse Wave. A little later she gains some
Incapacitate, but it’s not really worth it in my opinion. I mean, she either
has a 7 or 6 attack, which isn’t going to hit much anyway, and she’s just a
sitting duck then with her low 12 or 11 defense, no damage reducing powers,
and one light hit away from KO. Also, on the one Incapacitate click with 7
attack, she still has Ranged Combat Expert and 2 base damage (although she
has a base damage of 2 on each and every click), so you’ll more likely be
using that instead of Incap, that is unless you’re running back to your
medic. I would highly suggest to use those light blue clix as a signal to
fly her back to a medic for an easy heal (since her defense is only 12 or
11).
While that first click of hers is good, don’t have any qualms about pushing
her over, since she becomes all the more interesting. Although I wouldn’t
recommend just doing it on a whim like pushing off an activation click,
since it is quite useful and can scare your opponent into playing
defensively against a short charging BCFer, and it is quite useful as is.
Think about flying up (possibly soaring to avoid many ranged attacks),
clearing, then charging it for 1 to 6 damage, then if they hit you, just
force blast them into a wall or off a building. She’s definitely a lower
point game character…I wouldn’t really consider playing her in anything more
than 300 points. Sure, she could make an interesting secondary attacker and
an unexpected surprise attacker if your opponent doesn’t pay enough
attention to her, but her low defense value makes her an amazingly easy
target, and while damage reduction is always good, 3 clix of toughness isn’t
going to make too much of an impact in these higher point games.
The bottom line is that if you want to use her, have a blast, but I don’t
predict that too many teams will use her in a competitive play unless they
want to create a theme team or just want a piece that will mess with the
opponent’s head. I personally played a casual game against a silver theme
team that featured Silver Swan as the lead attacker (for those of you
wondering, it was 300 point constructed and also had R Steel, R Colossus, E
Silver Samurai, and R Cyborg). The team played ok, but they clearly didn’t
know how to use Silver Swan effectively…she mostly just fly around taxiing
and trying to set up a charge. Silver Swan definitely takes some skill to
use effectively, and can really do some damage in the right hands, but isn’t
the best choice for most.
Ratings:
100 points: 2 out of 5
200 points: 3 out of 5 (At this level, it is difficult to quickly adapt to
the sudden and substantial change that she has)
300 points: 2 out of 5
400+ points: 1.5 out of 5
Next time…he’s the new head of the DEO…
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WildWill |
Name: Silver Swan
Set: Unleashed!
Number: 90
Rarities: 6 - Unique
Costs: 73
Health: 8
SSADD:8/9/14/2
Powers: Charge, Force Blast, BCF, Pulse Wave, Incapacitate, Toughness, RCE
Ranged Attacks: 1Ranged 8
Team: None
You ever pull a figure out of a booster, look at it, discover it’s a Unique,
then say to yourself “Who the heck is this character?” Well, I guess that’s
the theme this week, little known characters who got themselves Uniques in
the new Unleashed sets. You have to be a pretty die hard DC junkie to have
even HEARD of these guys this week, let alone desire their clix.
Silver Swan is up first, and in order to relate her brief bio, I had to
check Whoclix (http://members.aol.com/whoclix/dc2qz.htm ) Since I had NO
idea who she was. Apparently she’s a Wonder Woman villain. Whoopee.
She’s got an interesting dial that looks really pretty, but doesn’t offer a
whole lot besides that. Charge and BCF is cool, but you only get one click
of that, then you have your choice of Force Blast , Pulse Wave or RCE.
However, with only an 8 attack at that point, that choice isn’t all that
exciting. Ultimately, I doubt she’ll appear on a lot of teams.
Have I ever mentioned that I love winged figures? Well I do, and I think
this one has a nice sculpt on her, if not spectacular. Her tiny hand could
actually hold a weapon too, that’s always nifty. Sales wise, Silver Swan is
definitely in the second tier of Uniques, if not the third. She’s popular,
having 53 auctions end within the last 90 days, ranging in price from $1.75
to $14.00, with an average of $7.77, however more than half of the sales
went for higher than $7.77.
My ratings –
Playability 3
Collectability 3
Next time – The man with a skin problem so bad, even dermatologists can’t
fix it.
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